Naruse’s first venture after departing Shochiku, Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts is also his inaugural sound film. Made in 1935, this sororal melodrama is adapted from Nobel-winner Kawabata Yasunari’s Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1930), a nocturnal, grimy X-ray of what was then downtown Tokyo’s most decadent and transgressive district. The titular sisters—Chieko, Osome and O-Ren—navigate Asakusa’s seedy nightlife in different ways: one is a shamisen player, the other a burlesque club dancer, while the third spends too much time with racketeers and gangsters. Some of the film’s (non-)actors are real-life revue stars; but most had little to no theatrical training. Naruse experiments with sound and image more than his studio contemporaries, employing two uncharacteristic techniques he would later rarely return to: voiceover narration and flashbacks (at least one of which is itself within a flashback). Three Sisters sees Naruse retaining the hyper-realist yet energetic editing of his silent-era opus, even as he is still finding his bearings at a new production company and with a new technology. Incidental, ambient noise plays a crucial role in the film’s sonorization of the city, as does pre-recorded music—including one remarkable (and hilarious) appearance of the gramophone. – Nace Zavrl